Binder1, page 5
He watched the gray spheroid moving towards him and fought to quiet his sobbing breath. There was no ;telling what other senses it might bring into play, even ;though the ruum seemed to prefer just to follow in his ;prints. But it certainly had a whole battery of instruments at its disposal. He crouched low behind the rock, ;every nerve a charged wire.
But there was no change of technique by the ruum;
seemingly intent on the footprints of its prey, the strange sphere rippled along, passing directly under the great ;boulder. As it did so, Irwin gave a savage yell, and ;thrusting his whole muscular weight against the balanced mass, toppled it squarely on the ruum. Five tons ;of stone fell from a height of twelve feet.
Jim scrambled down. He stood there, staring at the huge lump and shaking his head dazedly. “Fixed that ;son of a bitch!” he said in a thick voice. He gave the ;boulder a kick. “Hah! Walt and I might clear a buck or ;two yet from your little meat market. Maybe this expedition won’t be a total loss. Enjoy yourself in hell where ;you came from!”
Then he leaped back, his eyes wild. The giant rock was shifting! Slowly its five-ton bulk was sliding off the ;trail, raising a ridge of soil as it grated along. Even as ;he stared, the boulder tilted, and a gray protuberance ;appeared under the nearest edge. With a choked cry, ;Jim Irwin broke into a lurching run.
He ran a full mile down the trail. Then, finally, he stopped and looked back. He could just make out a ;dark dot moving away from the fallen rock. It progressed as slowly and as regularly and as inexorably as ;before, and in his direction. Jim sat down heavily, ;putting his head in his scratched, grimy hands.
But that despairing mood did not last. After all, he had gained a twenty minute respite. Lying down, trying ;to relax as much as possible, he took the flat packet of ;emergency rations from his jacket, and eating quickly ;but without bolting, disposed of some pemmican, biscuit, and chocolate. A few sips of icy water from a ;streamlet, and he was almost ready to continue his ;fantastic struggle. But first he swallowed one of the ;three benzedrine pills he carried for physical crises. ;When the ruum was still an estimated ten minutes ;away, Jim Irwin trotted off, much of his wiry strength ;back, and fresh courage to counter bone-deep weariness.
After running for fifteen minutes, he came to a sheer face of rock about 30 feet high. The terrain on either ;side was barely passable, consisting of choked gullies, ;spiky brush, and knife-edged rocks. If Jim could make ;the top of this little cliff, the ruum surely would have to ;detour, a circumstance that might put it many minutes ;behind him.
He looked up at the sun. Huge and crimson, it was almost touching the horizon. He would have to move ;fast. Irwin was no rock climber but he did know the ;fundamentals. Using every crevice, roughness, and minute ledge, he fought his way up the cliff. Somehow— ;unconsciously—he used that flowing climb of a natural ;mountaineer, which takes each foothold very briefly as ;an unstressed pivot point in a series of rhythmic advances.
He had just reached the top when the ruum rolled up to the base of the cliff.
Jim knew very well that he ought to leave at once, taking advantage of the few precious remaining moments of daylight. Every second gained was of tremendous value; but curiosity and hope made him wait. He ;told himself that the instant his pursuer detoured he ;would get out of there all the faster. Besides, the thing ;might even give up and he could sleep right here.
Sleep! His body lusted for it.
But the ruum would not detour. It hesitated only a few seconds at the foot of the barrier. Then a number of ;knobs opened to extrude metallic wands. One of these, ;topped with lenses, waved in the air. Jim drew back too ;late—their uncanny gaze had found him as he lay atop the ;cliff, peering down. He cursed his idiocy.
Immediately all the wands retracted, and from a different knob a slender rod, blood-red in the setting sun, began to shoot straight up to the man. As he watched, ;frozen in place, its barbed tip gripped the cliff’s edge ;almost under his nose.
Jim leaped to his feet. Already the rod was shortening as the ruum reabsorbed its shining length. And the leathery sphere was rising off the ground. Swearing ;loudly, Jim fixed his eyes on the tenacious hook, drawing back one heavy boot.
But experience restrained him. The mighty kick was never launched. He had seen too many rough-and-tumbles lost by an injudicious attempt at the boot. It ;wouldn’t do at all to let any part of his body get within ;reach of the ruum’s superb tools. Instead he seized a ;length of dry branch, and inserting one end under the ;metal hook, began to pry.
There was a sputtering flash, white and lacy, and even through the dry wood, he felt the potent surge of ;power that splintered the end. He dropped the smoldering stick with a gasp of pain, and wringing his ;numb fingers, backed off several steps, full of impotent ;rage. For a moment he paused, half inclined to run ;again, but then his upper lip drew back and snarling, ;he unslung his rifle. By God! He knew he had been ;right to lug the damned thing all this way—even if it ;had beat a tattoo on his ribs. Now he had the ruum ;right where he wanted it!
Kneeling to steady his arm in the failing light, Jim sighted at the hook and fired. There was a soggy thud ;as the ruum fell. Jim shouted. The heavy slug had done ;a lot more than he expected. Not only had it blasted the ;metal claw loose, but it had smashed a big gap in the ;cliff’s edge. It would be pretty damned hard for the ;ruum to use that part of the rock again!
He looked down. Sure enough, the ruum was back at the bottom. Jim Irwin grinned. Every time the thing ;clamped a hook over the bluff, he’d blow that hook ;loose. There was plenty of ammunition in his pocket ;and, until the moon rose, bringing a good light for ;shooting with it, he’d stick the gun’s muzzle inches ;away if necessary. Besides, the thing—whatever it might ;be—was obviously too intelligent to keep up a hopeless ;struggle. Sooner or later it would accept the detour. ;And then, maybe the night would help to hide his trail.
Then—he choked and, for a brief moment, tears came to his eyes. Down below, in the dimness, the ;squat, phlegmatic spheroid was extruding three hooked ;rods simultaneously in a fanlike spread. In a perfectly ;coordinated movement, the rods snagged the cliff’s edge ;at intervals of about four feet.
Jim Irwin whipped the rifle to his shoulder. All right— this was going to be just like rapid-fire for record back ;at Benning. Only, at Benning, they didn’t expect good ;shooting in the dark!
But the first shot was a bull’s-eye, smacking the left-hand hook loose in a puff of rock dust. His second ;shot did almost as well, knocking the gritty stuff loose ;so the center barb slipped off. But even as he whirled ;to level at number three, Jim saw it was hopeless.
The first hook was back in place. No matter how well he shot, at least one rod would always be in position, ;pulling the ruum to the top.
Jim hung the useless rifle muzzle down from a stunted tree and ran into the deepening dark. The toughening ;of his body, a process of years, was paying off now. So ;what? Where was he going? What could he do now? ;Was there anything that could stop the damned thing ;behind him?
Then he remembered the dynamite.
Gradually changing his course, the weary man cut back towards his camp by the lake. Overhead the stars ;brightened, pointing the way. Jim lost all sense of time. ;He must have eaten as he wobbled along, for he wasn’t ;hungry. Maybe he could eat at the lean-to . . . no, ;there wouldn’t be time . . . take a benzedrine pill. No, ;the pills were all gone and the moon was up and he ;could hear the ruum close behind. Close.
Quite often phosphorescent eyes peered at him from the underbrush and once, just at dawn, a grizzly whoofed ;with displeasure at his passage.
Sometime during the night his wife, Cele, stood before him with outstretched arms. “Go away!” he rasped. “Go away! You can make it! It can’t chase both of us!”
So she turned and ran lightly alongside of him. But when Irwin panted across a tiny glade, Cele faded away ;into the moonlight and he realized she hadn’t been ;there at all.
Shortly after sunrise Jim Irwin reached the lake. The ruum was close enough for him to hear the dull sounds ;of its passage. Jim staggered, his eyes closed. He hit ;himself feebly on the nose, his eyes jerked open and he ;saw the explosive. The sight of the greasy sticks of ;dynamite snapped Irwin wide awake.
He forced himself to calmness and carefully considered what to do. Fuse? No. It would be impossible to leave fused dynamite in the trail and time the detonation with the absolute precision he needed. Sweat poured ;down his body, his clothes were sodden with it. It was ;hard to think. The explosion must be set off from a ;distance and at the exact moment the ruum was passing ;over it. But Irwin dared not use a long fuse. The rate of ;burning was not constant enough. Couldn’t calibrate it ;perfectly with the ruum’s advance. Jim Irwin’s body ;sagged all over, his chin sank toward his heaving chest. ;He jerked his head up, stepped back—and saw the .22 ;pistol where he had left it in the lean-to.
His sunken eyes flashed.
Moving with frenetic haste, he took the half-filled case, piled all the remaining percussion caps among the ;loose sticks in a devil’s mixture. Weaving out to the ;trail, he carefully placed box and contents directly on ;his earlier tracks some twenty yards from a rocky ledge. ;It was a risk—the stuff might go any time—but that ;didn’t matter. He would far rather be blown to rags ;than end up living but paralyzed in the ruum’s outdoor ;butcher’s stall.
The exhausted Irwin had barely hunched down behind the thin ledge of rock before his inexorable pursuer appeared over a slight rise 500 yards away. Jim scrunched deeper into the hollow, then saw a vertical ;gap, a narrow crack between rocks. That was it, he ;thought vaguely. He could sight through the gap at the ;dynamite and still be shielded from the blast. If it was a ;shield . . . when that half-case blew only twenty yards ;away . . .
He stretched out on his belly, watching the ruum roll forward. A hammer of exhaustion pounded his ballooning skull. Jesus! When he had slept last? This was the ;first time he had lain down in hours. Hours? Ha! it was ;days. His muscles stiffened, locked into throbbing, burning knots. Then he felt the morning sun on his back, ;soothing, warming, easing . . . No! If he let go, if he ;slept now, it was the ruum’s macabre collection for Jim ;Irwin! Stiff fingers tightened around the pistol. He’d ;stay awake! If he lost—if the ruum survived the blast— ;there’d still be time to put a bullet through his brain.
He looked down at the sleek pistol, then out at the innocent-seeming booby trap. If he timed this right— ;and he would—the ruum wouldn’t survive. No. He ;relaxed a little, yielding just a bit to the gently insistent ;sun. A bird whistled softly somewhere above him and a ;fish splashed in the lake.
Suddenly he was wrenched to full awareness. Damn! Of all times for a grizzly to come snooping about! With ;the whole of Irwin’s camp ready for greedy looting, a ;fool bear had to come sniffing around the dynamite! ;The furred monster smelled carefully at the box, nosed ;around, rumbled deep displeasure at the alien scent of ;man. Irwin held his breath. Just a touch would blow a ;cap. A single cap meant. . .
The grizzly lifted his head from the box and growled hoarsely. The box was ignored, the offensive odor of ;man was forgotten. Its feral little eyes focussed on a ;plodding spheroid that was now only forty yards away. ;Jim Irwin snickered. Until he had met the ruum the ;grizzly bear of the North American continent was the ;only thing in the world he had ever feared. And now— ;why the hell was he so calm about it?—the two terrors ;of his existence were meeting head on and he was ;laughing. He shook his head and the great side muscles ;in his neck hurt abominably. He looked down at his ;pistol, then out at the dynamite. These were the only ;real things in his world.
About six feet from the bear, the ruum paused. Still in the grip of that almost idiotic detachment, Jim Irwin ;found himself wondering again what it was, where it ;had come from. The grizzly arose on its haunches, the ;embodiment of utter ferocity. Terrible teeth flashed ;white against red lips. The business-like ruum started ;to roll past. The bear closed in, roaring. It cuffed at the ;ruum. A mighty paw, armed with black claws sharper ;and stronger than scythes, made that cuff. It would ;have disemboweled a rhinoceros. Irwin cringed as that ;side-swipe knocked dust from the leathery sphere. The ;ruum was hurled back several inches. It paused, recovered, and with the same dreadful casualness it rippled ;on, making a wider circle, ignoring the bear.
But the lord of the woods wasn’t settling for any draw. Moving with that incredible agility which has ;terrified Indians, Spanish, French and Anglo-Americans ;since the first encounter of any of them with his species, the grizzly whirled, side-stepped beautifully and ;hugged the ruum. The terrible, shaggy forearms tightened, the slavering jaws champed at the gray surface. ;Irwin half rose. “Go it!” he croaked. Even as he cheered ;the clumsy emperor of the wild, Jim thought it was an ;insane tableau: the village idiot wrestling with a beach ;ball.
Then silver metal gleamed bright against gray. There was a flash, swift and deadly. The roar of the king ;abruptly became a whimper, a gurgle and then there ;was nearly a ton of terror wallowing in death—its throat ;slashed open. Jim Irwin saw the bloody blade retract ;into the gray spheroid, leaving a bright red smear on ;the thing’s dusty hide.
And the ruum rolled forward past the giant corpse, implacable, still intent on the man’s spoor, his footprints, his pathway. Okay, baby, Jim giggled at the dead ;grizzly, this is for you, for Cele, for—for lots of poor ;dumb animals like us—come to, you damned fool, he ;cursed at himself. And aimed at the dynamite. And ;very calmly, very carefully, Jim Irwin squeezed the ;trigger of his pistol.
Briefly, sound first. Then giant hands lifted his body from where he lay, then let go. He came down hard, ;face in a patch of nettles, but he was sick, he didn’t ;care. He remembered that the birds were quiet. Then ;there was a fluid thump as something massive struck ;the grass a few yards away. Then there was quiet.
Irwin lifted his head ... all men do in such a case. His body still ached. He lifted sore shoulders and saw ;... an enormous, smoking crater in the earth. He also ;saw, a dozen paces away, gray-white because it was ;covered now with powdered rock, the ruum.
It was under a tall, handsome pine tree. Even as Jim watched, wondering if the ringing in his ears would ;ever stop, the ruum rolled toward him.
Irwin fumbled for his pistol. It was gone. It had dropped somewhere, out of reach. He wanted to pray, ;then, but couldn’t get properly started. Instead, he ;kept thinking, idiotically, “My sister Ethel can’t spell ;Nebuchadnezzar and never could. My sister Ethel—”
The ruum was a foot away now, and Jim closed his eyes. He felt cool, metallic fingers touch, grip, lift. His ;unresisting body was raised several inches, and juggled ;oddly. Shuddering, he waited for the terrible syringe ;with its green liquid, seeing the yellow, shrunken face ;of a lizard with one eyelid a-tremble.
Then, dispassionately, without either roughness or solicitude, the ruum put him back on the ground. When ;he opened his eyes, some seconds later, the sphere was ;rolling away. Watching it go, he sobbed dryly.
It seemed a matter of moments only, before he heard the seaplane’s engine, and opened his eyes to see Walt ;Leonard bending over him.
* * *
Later, in the plane, 5000 feet above the valley, Walt grinned suddenly, slapped him on the back, and cried, ;“Jim, I can get a whirlybird, a four place job! Why, if ;we can snatch up just a few of those prehistoric lizards ;and things while the museum keeper’s away, it’s like ;you said—the scientists will pay us plenty.”
Jim’s hollow eyes lit up. “That the idea,” he agreed. Then, bitterly: “I might just as well have stood in bed. ;Evidently the damned thing didn’t want me at all. ;Maybe it wanted to know what I paid for these pants! ;Barely touched me, then let go. And how I ran!” ;“Yeah,” Walt said. “That was damned queer. And ;after that marathon. I admire your guts, boy.” He glanced ;sideways at Jim Irwin’s haggard face. “That night’s run ;cost you plenty. I figure you lost over ten pounds.”
Henry Kuttner started his professional writing career when he was a teenager. His early work was crude. To ;see how crude, compare his Elak of Atlantis stories with ;one of their obvious models, the classic Jirel of Joiry ;pieces by C. L. Moore (who later met and married ;him).
Early on, Kuttner put his hand to any form of writing that would earn him a buck. When Marvel Science Stories (not to be confused with other magazines of ;similar name) made a two-issue attempt to boost circulation with (what was for the 1930s) pornography, ;Kuttner wrote most of the stories under a variety of ;pseudonyms. According to Manly Wade Wellman, who ;was present, Kuttner told the informal writers’ gathering in The Steuben Tavern that he was making a lot of ;money on his new assignment.
“You bet, Hank,” said another of those present. “Kill a monster, grab a tit. Kill a monster, grab a tit.”
But Kuttner continued learning his craft for as long as his short life let him practice it.
This isn’t as common as you’d think. Science fiction has its share of one-shot authors, people who did one ;brilliant work and never equalled it no matter how long ;they kept trying. This is unfortunate (especially for the ;writers, I suppose); but you can attribute it to a flash of ;genius and decide you were lucky to get that one undeserved marvel.
Much more depressing to me are the writers who start out doing flawed work; not great, but good enough ;to get published because on balance the strengths outweigh the flaws. A solid foundation to build on.
Except that the next work, and the work they’re doing ten years later, has precisely the same flaws as ;that original piece. They’re never going to get any ;better. They don’t even have a clue as to what they’re ;doing wrong.
Writers like this don’t come from any particular point in the literary spectrum. Sometimes they reach entry ;level because they were the darlings of this or that writers’ workshop, sure; but it’s just as likely that their ;first sale was a barbarian fantasy, because they happened to have written a novel of that sort in time to hit ;one of the periodic booms which peak the sub-genre.
